Grifter

My client gets drunk and rear-ends a woman’s car. The woman – let’s call her Janet – has her two young children with her. The collision causes slight damage to the cars. The airbags don't deploy.

My client is arrested for drunk driving.

Janet immediately – immediately – claims pain and suffering. She takes her kids to the hospital and wracks up $45,000 in medical bills. They are discharged a day later with no recommendation for further treatment except over-the-counter pain medication for Janet.

Medi-Cal pays the hospital bills. Medi-Cal is government-paid medical insurance for people who can’t afford health care.

My client has to pay restitution as part of his drunk-driving probation. Restitution is payment to victims of crime for their losses caused by the crime. Restitution is appropriate in a case like this one. But Janet is trying to steal, plain and simple. Here’s why:

• Janet claims that her child was so injured that she had to stay home from work for a month to care for him. She lost wages, she said, of $8,100. Those monthly wages add up to $97,200 a year. Mighty high for somebody with government-paid health insurance. 
• And it’s odd that Janet should have to stay home for a month to take care of her child. The doctors on the day of the accident did not say he needed any follow-up care. And Janet submitted no medical records for any post-day-of-the-accident treatment. 
• Janet claimed that she had to get $6,500 in treatment at the Serenity Day Spa. That’s a lot of hot-stone massages.
• Janet claimed that she had to get psychological counseling for her and her children because of the accident. That’s right: psychological counseling for a bumper-tap.
• Janet has no proof or receipts for any of this. No check-stubs from work. No receipts for any of the treatments.
• Janet claimed that she had to declare bankruptcy because of the medical bills. But I checked the bankruptcy-court records. She declared bankruptcy in 2004, and her bankruptcy was discharged that same year. That was long before the accident.

The prosecutor is a decent Joe. But he takes the position that Janet should get basically everything she wants. I think the world has gone crazy.

So I submit a brief to the judge. And I point out all of the issues that I point out here. The judge reads the brief and calls the lawyers back into her office. She tells the prosecutor bluntly that his "victim" is out of line. Bless the judge.

 

The judge makes it clear that she will not order restitution for any expenses that the "victim" does not prove up with substantial evidence. In particular, the judge agrees that it’s odd that somebody with government-paid insurance claims to earn $8,100 per month.

 

I argue that the judge shouldn’t order any restitution, based on the "victims" fraud. But the judge won’t go that far.

 

So the judge says she’ll order restitution for the medical expenses. Because there is proof of that. I have case authority showing that the "victim" does not get restitution for the amount of the medical bills; only for what the insurance paid on her behalf. (I know, why shouldn’t the money go to the insurance company instead of the "victim"? It’s a quirk of the law.)

 

But that’s OK. Because on $46,000 billed by the hospital, Medi-Cal paid $1,800. My client easily can afford that.

 

All in all, this was a lot of work.  It took effort to discover that this was a Medi-Cal case.  It took effort to find out how little Medi-Cal paid on the substantial hospital bill.  It took effort to research the law.  It took effort to comb through the facts to discover discrepancies in the "victim's" claims.

 

But things turned out alright.

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This case was part of our criminal-law practice at Schlueter & Schlueter. Our website is http://criminal-civilrights-attorney.com/